Popular orchestral music conductor and arranger, one of the pioneers of easy listening music. André (Abram) Kostelanetz was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, into a prominent Jewish family. He was a cousin of the physicist Lew Kowarski and caricaturist Anatol Kowarski. His father, Nachman Yokhelevich (Naum Ignatyevich) Kostelanetz was active on St. Petersburg stock exchange; his grandfather (on maternal side) Aizik Yevelevich Dymshitz was a wealthy merchant and industrialist, engaged in timber production. Kostelanetz escaped in 1922 after the Russian Revolution. He arrived in the United States that year, and in the 1920s, conducted concerts for radio. In the 1930s, he began his own weekly show on CBS, André Kostelanetz Presents.

Eleanor Steber (July 17, 1914 – October 3, 1990) was an American operatic soprano. Steber is noted as one of the first major opera stars to have achieved the highest success with training and a career based in the United States. Here on this audio broadcast of May 21, 1944 she is a guest on the Andre Kostelanetz show...conducted this week by Percy Faith.

Russian émigré Andre Kostelanetz began making Easy Listening Music before there was a category called Easy Listening. Kostelanetz got his start in performance a child in the Petrograd choir. He would later lead the choir. Fleeing the Russian Revolution, he came to the U.S. in 1922. Taking work at first as an accompanist, he made his radio debut in 1924 as an orchestral conductor. During the 1930's he put together a 65-piece orchestra, the largest in radio at the time, for the program, "Andre Kostelanetz Presents." He conducted many concerts for radio. In the 1930s, he began his own weekly show on CBS, Andre Kostelanetz Presents. Kostelanetz was known for arranging and recording light classical music pieces for mass audiences, as well as orchestral versions of songs and Broadway show tunes. He made numerous recordings over the course of his career, which had sales of over 50 million and became staples of beautiful music radio stations.